Real

It’s unreal. It feels empty, like the pursuit of pleasure has permeated the everyday, where shiny new buildings and structures pop up like daffodils, like it was plopped down in a very short time, rather than being built up with a solid foundation and years and years of effort, work, culture, sweat, blood, tears. It’s as empty as the capital it took to build it. The nouvelle riche, where luxuries are easy to come by, and by the same token, easy to go.

Real isn’t pleasant. It’s not nice, not comfortable, not safe. It’s risky, grimy, gritty. It forces you to understand the darkness in life, the tragedies, the visceral pain of living. It reminds you that you have to work for the small pleasures you have. And that small pleasures, most of the time, are enough. That not everything has to be grandiose, but that it has to be yours. It doesn’t feel like that here. It’s not a home that was built out of the smells of years of home cooking, the cracks in the wall where a moment of anger sent a door slamming into it, the stains on the carpet, each telling its own story. It’s ostentatious, glorified, but at the center of it, a house of straw.